Discount coupons and other similar "tokens" are conventionally offered by manufacturers and retailers in newspapers, in magazines, by direct mail, and the like to entice members of the public to buy a particular product or service. As is well known, such coupons are usually targeted to specific types of consumers, and such targeting may be performed in a highly sophisticated manner. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the redemption rate for coupons in many situations may be in the range of one to two percent. A major reason for such a low rate is that many coupons offered to a particular consumer are rejected by that consumer simply for lack of interest. Further, even if a consumer wishes to take advantage of a coupon offer, the consumer may be prevented from doing so based on the inability to redeem the coupon before the expiration date. As a result, ninety-eight percent or more of all offered coupons are never redeemed.
Systems have been proposed to increase the rate of redemption of coupons. For example, in one system, product information (i.e., listings, specifications, prices, discounts or other information for a product or service including depiction by language or graphics) is broadcast from a central location to a user's remote location, either as an over-the-air broadcast television signal or a cable television signal. In response to the transmitted product information, the user can print a redeemable coupon at a generating unit at the user's remote location based upon the transmitted information. While such system may increase the percentage of coupons redeemed, the system has a serious disadvantage in that the user must endure what is essentially an unending series of television commercials, many of which are for products and/or services of no interest to the user.
In an improvement to the aforementioned system, the transmitted product information from the central location is stored in a storage unit at the user's remote location. The user can then play back, rewind, and fast forward through the stored product information, and can print a redeemable coupon at a generating unit at the user's remote location based upon the stored information. The storage unit can be configured to store all transmitted product information or only the transmitted product information that meets pre-selected requirements (e.g., product information for food products only). However, the improved system shares the same disadvantage as the previous system in that a user must still sift through much product information of no interest to the user. Furthermore, both systems are impractical in that the cost of placing a coupon generating unit at each user's remote location is prohibitive.
A need exists, then, for a redeemable coupon generation system that allows a user to quickly access and peruse promotions or offers that are likely to be of interest to that user, that allows the user to generate one or more coupons to take advantage of at least one of the accessed promotions and offers, and that does not require additional equipment beyond that which is likely already available to the user.